Fine-tuning argument

In cosmology, fine tuning refers to the precise balance of cosmological constants that allow the observable universe to exist as it does. These constants include the speed of light, the rate of expansion of the universe, the force of gravity, the nuclear strong force, the electromagnetic force, and many other parameters of the observable universe. It is claimed that these constants exist in such a state of precise equilibrium that any variation to their values would have resulted in a drastically different universe. The fine tuning argument states that these values occurring in such a precise state by mere chance is highly improbable, and that there must have been a creator to fine tune these values in order for our universe to exist as it does and for life to exist on Earth. This argument is the same as the anthropic theistic principle.

Background

The argument of fine tuning is a rather new one. It has only become popular since the mid-1990s with recent observations about the observable universe and cosmological constants. Cosmologists have theorized that even minute variations in the values of these constants would have resulted in a radically different universe or one altogether unsuitable for supporting life as we know it.

Example 1: The rate of expansion of matter after the Big Bang had to occur at precisely the right rate to allow our universe to form as it has. If it had expanded any faster, matter would have dissipated too quickly for stars and solar systems to form. If it had occurred any slower, the universe would have collapsed upon itself shortly after the Big Bang, resulting in what is known as a Big Crunch.

Example 2: The strong nuclear force is the force which binds protons and neutrons together in the nucleus of an atom. Scientists have calculated that variations in the strong force of as little as ±1% would have drastically affected the breakdown of naturally occurring elements in the universe, prohibiting the formation of stars, black holes, and other natural occurring phenomena.

There are studies of numerous other constants with similar results.

Apologetics

Deists cite this remarkable balance of cosmological constants as evidence of a creator, being a far too unlikely set of circumstances to have occurred naturally. This is quickly becoming the argument of choice of creationism proponents like Lee Strobel. Strobel presents this concept as incontrovertible empirical evidence of God in his book The Case for a Creator.

Formal Statement of the Argument

Here is Drange’s formulation:

1. The combination of physical constants that we observe in our universe is the only one capable of sustaining life as we know it.

2. Other combinations of physical constants are conceivable.

3. Therefore, some explanation is needed why our actual combination of physical constants exists rather than a different one.

4. The very best explanation of the given fact is that our universe, with the particular combination of physical constants that it has, was created out of nothing by a single being who is omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving, eternal, and interested in sentient organic systems, and that he “fine-tuned” those constants in a way which would lead to the evolution of such systems.

5. But such a being as described in (4) is what people mean by “God.”

6. Hence [from (4) & (5)], there is good evidence that God exists.

Fine Tuning Argument for Atheism

Some philosophers have noted that the fine tuning argument is not vastly good argument for the existence of God but rather a vastly good argument for the non-existence of God. Largely the argument itself hinges on the narrow range of properties for the universe to develop to allow for life. But, this narrow range are precisely the required range needed for life in this universe to occur naturally if there were no God.

If there were a God, rather than needing 70 sextillion stars and 13.75 billion years, there would only be need of one planet. Rather than having more planets than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. The only reason this universe needs to be this vast and this old is if life occurs randomly without any intelligent design. If life occurs only by happenstance, then any life that exists should exist in a amazingly vast universe just to allow the chemicals needed to kick up life enough chances to happen to kick up something as complex as life.

If somebody claims to be psychic and they win the lottery three times in a row. That seems to be good evidence. However, if they bought every possible combination of numbers for each of those lotteries. That feat requires no psychic abilities at all.

Only upon the assumption of atheism do we really need these exact values. For only these values allow the formation of life to occur without God and without any outside influences.

The fine-tuning argument is actually therefore a great argument for atheism. Which theists are wrongly claiming as evidence for God.

"The universe looks exactly as it should look if there is no God. How amazing is that exactness? Therefore God exists." -- If the universe looked as if it couldn't exist only by chance, theists would and do claim God exists in that case as well. The universe is either cannot happen naturally and therefore God did it, or the universe can happen naturally and what an amazing feat that is and therefore God did it. Resulting in a Brian's Paradox

Richard Carrier's Presentation

Richard Carrier stated this argument in an interview with TheBestSchools[1]:

"Similarly the “fine tuning” of the universe’s physical constants: that would be a great proof—if it wasn’t exactly the same thing we’d see if a god didn’t exist. If there is no god, we will only ever find ourselves in a universe finely tuned (in that case, by random chance), because without a god, there is no other kind of universe that can produce us. Likewise, a universe that produced us by chance would have to be enormously vast in size and enormously old, so as to have all the room to mix countless chemicals countless times in countless places so as to have any chance of accidentally kicking up something as complex as life. And that’s exactly the universe we see: one enormously vast in size and age. A godless universe would also only produce life rarely and sparingly, and that’s also what we see: by far most of the universe is lethal to life (being a deadly radiation filled vacuum) and by far most of the matter in the universe is lethal to life (constituting stars and black holes on which no life can ever live). Again, all exactly what we’d expect of a godless universe. Not what we’d expect of a god-made one."

Thus, we have exactly the universe we’d expect to have if there is no god. Whereas a god does not need vast trillions of star systems and billions of years to make life. He doesn’t need vast quantities of lethal space and deadly matter. Only a godless universe needs that. I make a more detailed survey of this kind of evidence in “Neither Life Nor the Universe Appear Intelligently Designed” in John Loftus’s The End of Christianity. It also does no good to say such a random accidental universe is improbable, because the convenient existence of a marvelously “super-omni” god is just as improbable. Either way you are assuming some amazing luck. Which leaves the evidence. And the evidence is just way more probable if there’s no god. Thus, we’re forced to choose between which lucky accident it was, and the evidence confirms the one and not the other."

Counter-apologetics

Essentially this argument is just a variation on the argument from design. The key difference here is that it misrepresents actual scientific evidence in such a way to support an unscientific conclusion. A more scientific conclusion would be to state that there is some unknown natural phenomenon to explain this apparent "fine tuning". It is also worth mentioning that a counter-argument to design, natural-law argument, and the anthropic principle is also a counter-argument to fine-tuning. See below.

A problem arises from the premise that the cosmological constants are in fact 'fine tuned' at all. This premise assumes that there is a certain range of values that each constant could assume. The greater these ranges, the more unlikely that a given set of constants would have assumed the values we observe. However, to simply imagine a certain range of possible numerical values that each constant could assume and calculating the probability that this value would be arrived at by mere chance is fallacious for two reasons. Currently, we have no access to data that would tell us a) what range the constants could possibly assume in reality and b) how many trials there were in which the constants assumed certain values. If in a lottery one number were drawn from a pot of five numbers, then winning the lottery would become comparatively likely. Likewise, even if a trial with an extremely unlikely outcome - say winning an actual national lottery - were repeated a sufficient number of times, the outcome would become likely to occur overall. (See next point)

Scientists theorize that given the infinite nature of time and space, an infinite number of other unobservable universes could exist parallel to our own, each with infinite variations of constants. This is known as the multiverse theory. Given infinite possibilities, the formation of a universe such as our own is not so inconceivable.

Another flaw with this argument is that it assumes our universe is finely tuned for the sole purpose of supporting life. This is not the case at all. Given the laws of our universe, scientists theorize that our universe is composed of less than 2% baryonic matter, that is matter consisting of protons, neutrons or other particles equal or greater than that of a proton. Dark matter is by far the most common form of matter in our universe. Our universe, if anything, is far more suited for the creation of black holes than it is for supporting life. Life on our planet constitutes only an insignificant portion of our universe.

The Earth's total mass is 5.9736×10^24 kg while the estimated total biomass on Earth is around 7×10^13 kg. This means that the percentage of life on Earth is 1.17182269 × 10^-9. That is .00000000117%. The Earth, let alone the universe, is hardly fine tuned for life. Man has created and tested much more finely tuned mediums for simple life in the form of specialized agar solutions that support life/medium ratios far greater than .00000000117%.

In order for the probability argument to be valid, the fundamental constants under consideration have to be independent. That is, one cannot claim that the gravitational constant and the speed of expansion of the universe were individually tuned, since they are clearly related. The electromagnetic force is mediated by massless photons which travel at the speed of light, so therefore the strength of this force is likely related to the speed of light. Similar relationships may yet emerge between other constants.

If there were a creator who "fine tuned" the universe for our existence, who "fine tuned" the universe in order for said creator to exist? The argument of a creator is infinitely paradoxical.

The initial premise of the argument is that in order for life to exist, the universe must have such properties that warrant a designer. However in this line of reasoning, the designer of those properties would exist in a state where none of these properties were true. Therefore any properties deemed to require a designer can't be necessary for existence in the first place, as the designer can exist without them. The argument is self-refuting.

If one starts with the assumption that humanity is an accident, the fine tuning argument makes no sense since if we are an accident, no fine tuning was necessary. For the fine tuning argument to make any sense, one has to start with the assumption that humanity is not an accident, which begs the question of a creator. But since the purpose of the argument is to prove that there is a god who created us, any such assumption renders the argument circular.

If we are to consider the chance of the universe existing the way it did, surely the same principle of chance can be reversed. What is the chance that a truly omnipotent God, as proposed by many religions, made the constants, factors and general details of the universe as he did? he would have infinite possibilities meaning the probability would be 1 in infinity - much less than the supposed calculations of those presenting the argument.

It may be useful to realize that the vast majority of the universe is uninhabitable by any form of life, albeit human life. If there are so many regions of space, and indeed our own planet, that are uninhabitable by life, then why should we call the universe "fine-tuned"?.

The argument also seems to call into question the omnipotence of the creator. If he were infinitely powerful, why did he make life constrained to survive only in a tiny fraction of the universe? The case for supernatural intervention would be much more plausible if humans found themselves floating in the vacuum of space, on a toxic planet with no oxygen, or somewhere else where our continued survival was a complete mystery to scientists. As it is, we find life only in areas where the facts of biology tell us it can exist. This is exactly what we would expect if we were not the products of omnipotence.

When considering the arguments fourth premise, which includes "...created out of nothing by a single being who is omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving, eternal...", the question must be raised of how does the God being posited as the creator of said universe gain the attributes stated by the argument? the argument is in no way structured to determine the precise attributes of the personal being of which the presenter asserts. It is not necessary for the creator to be all-loving, he could be making us with the notion of torturing us for all we know. It is not necessary for the creator to be eternal, he could have fizzled out in the creation or could have died of some unfathomable cause. And it is likewise unnecessary for the creator to be omniscient and/or omnipotent, there are logical arguments against the proposition of such attributes, and the being need not be all-powerful/knowing - he could just be really, really powerful and know a lot, but not everything.

It may be worth noting, also, that the some of the constants specified not not require arbitrary precision. With regards to the Goldilocks zone, the amount Earth can be distanced from the sun is approximately 37%, right out to Mars (yes, our solar system has two planets in the Goldilocks zone). The point being that the so-called precision we find, is actually not that precise in reality (this is one of the more extreme cases, most others can be changed but the difference being not as much).

Firstly, it has to be pointed out that for an omnipotent God the fundamental constants would be irrelevant. An omnipotent God could have created us in a universe with any set of constants had he chose to. But this is not the line of thinking the theist takes. The constants had to be what they are because, as they claim, if they were different we would have no life.
If the constants necessarily had to be what they are than that implies that there is some set of governing rules that even God must follow, that supersede his power. If God HAD to fine-tune the universe to these particular set of constants because not doing so would not have allowed him to bring life into existence (and as they claim in their argument, a different set and there's no life) then God is indeed NOT omnipotent.

Not withstanding the obvious fact that the universe really isn't very congenial towards life, as 99.999% of the observed universe is uninhabitable, Vic Stenger in his book God: The failed hypothesis, quotes a private communication with Martin Wagner in which he points out that:

"In fact, the whole argument from fine-tuning ultimately makes no sense. As my friend Martin Wagner notes, all physical parameters are irrelevant to an omnipotent God. 'he could have created us to live in a hard vacuum if he wanted.'"

Bertrand Russell:

"Why did God issue just those natural laws and no others? If you say that he did it simply from his own good pleasure, and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted. If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary."

We can view the universe as one of those massive safes that banks keep in their vaults, with a number of dials that must be set to specific values in order to open it. However, in our example, these dials can be literally set to any number, so that an infinite number of combinations are possible. The one combination that will open the safe is analogous to the values of the physical constants of the universe that allow the existence of intelligent life.

The "fine tuning" argument claims that it is, for all intents, impossible to randomly set the the values of the dials and, simply by chance, arrive at the correct combination that will open the safe. Only someone who actually knows the combination can open it. In the argument, this requires the existence of a god who knows the precise setting that will allow life to arise.

However, if this god is the creator of the universe and everything in it, then he is not limited to simply turning the dials on the safe. He must also have been responsible for building the safe itself, and setting the combination that allows it to be opened. This means he also has the ability to adjust the locking mechanism of the safe so that any combination he wants will open it. Therefore, it can no longer be said that only one combination is capable of opening the safe. Now, there is a literally infinite number of combinations that can open it.

Restated in the form of the argument itself: The (apparent) fact that only a specific combination of values of physical constants allows life to arise is, itself, an expression of a fundamental law of the universe. If God can change the values of those physical constants, there is no reason to believe he cannot also change the more fundamental laws that limit the conditions under which life will arise.

This has two fatal consequences for the "fine tuning" argument:

1) If God can, in fact, adjust the "combination" of the safe to any values he wants, this completely refutes the claim that life can only arise under a very specific set of circumstances. Rather, if such a God exists, life should be able to arise under any set of circumstances whatsoever, with infinite possibilities. The "fine tuning" argument, therefore, can no longer be used as evidence for the existence of such a God.

2) If, on the other hand, God cannot adjust the "combination", then this raises a situation that most theists would find unacceptable. It raises the question of who or what actually is responsible for creating the safe, and deciding on its combination. God, in this scenario, is reduced to being a low-level employee of the bank, who is able to open the safe, but is not responsible for the operation of the safe itself, nor entrusted with the ability to set the combination of the safe. Those responsibilities must be taken over by some entity more powerful and important than God. This is incompatible with most theistic beliefs, particularly the Abrahamic monotheistic ones.

Posit X and Y as features of human understanding. In the case of fine-tuning, X is "the combination of physical constants which is necessarily capable of sustaining life" and Y is "the combination of physical constants which is necessarily incapable of sustaining life".

1.X is necessary or has a necessary part (the necessity of being capable of sustaining life).

Y is necessary or has a necessary part (the physical necessity of being hostile to life).

2.If theism is true, then divine creation obtains.

3.If divine creation is true, then all in the universe is contingent to God’s act of creation, and nothing in the universe is necessary.

4.If theism is true, then no X or Y can be necessary or have a necessary part. (from 2 and 3)

5.Theism is false. (from 1 and 4)

The theist can of course deny premise 1, but doing so is a denial of the fine-tuning argument. The first premise of this argument is the same as the first premise of the fine-tuning argument.

The first premise of the fine-tuning argument is:

1. "The combination of physical constants that we observe in our universe is the only one capable of sustaining life as we know it".

This means that:

The combination of physical constants in our universe -> necessarily capable of sustaining life as we know it (denoted by X).

And

The combination of other physical constants -> necessarily incapable of sustaining life as we know it (denoted by Y).

In a similar form of the argument:

1. If theism is true, then divine causation obtains.

2. If divine causation obtains, then all facts of the universe are contingent upon God's act of creation.

3. If theism is true, then life can arise under any possible physical condition. (from 1 and 2)

4. If theism is true, then fine-tuning is invalid. (from 3)

Maybe the transition from premise 2 to 3 requires further justification. Denote the physical constants by {X; Y; Z) and the obtainment of life by L and negation by ~.

A fact of the universe is that {X--> L; Y--> ~L; Z--> ~L}.

Since the fact is contingent upon God's act of creation, then it is not necessary and so can be altered.

If it can be altered then the following can be true {X--> L; Y--> L; Z--> L}. Basically, X, Y, and Z are irrelevant to God if divine causation obtains.

So as a shorthand one can say that “contingency implies the impossibility of principles and absolutes”.

One can of course deny that divine creation obtains, and deny that God created the laws of science. However, this means that God is not the Creator and that he is subject to these laws himself.

Stephen Hawking on the Anthropic Principle:

"The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions that are necessary for their existence. It is a bit like a rich person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."

"What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn't prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary". [Stephen W. Hawking, Der Spiegel, 1989]

"One does not have to appeal to God to set the initial conditions for the creation of the universe, but if one does He would have to act through the laws of physics". [Stephen Hawking, Black Holes & Baby Universes]

The features of humanity have evolved as a result of our environment, rather than our environment being tailored to suit us.

Douglas Adams c.1998:

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."

Furthermore, the "fine-tuning argument" is a logical fallacy of the "ex-post-facto statistics" type. It applies in situations like this whenever we apply probability laws to past events.

For example, we all know the probability of being dealt a bridge hand of, say, all thirteen spades is quite small. But if we look at any bridge hand after we're dealt it, the probabilities of being dealt that exact hand are just as minuscule.

Given, hypothetically, an array of 52 different universes, the probability of actualizing our universe is 1 in 52. But if we look at any universe after it has been actualized, the probability of that occurring is just as minuscule.

-Life is just one of the possible things that may arise in the universe, and by itself is no more or less important than any of those other things. It's just that, as living beings ourselves, we tend to place a higher value on life than other aspects of the universe.

-We cannot assume that life as we know it is the only possible form that life could take. If the constants of the universe were different, that does not rule out the possibility that intelligent life could nonetheless still arise, albeit in a form currently unimaginable to us.

-It is foolish to say the universe is exquisitely set for the existence of life, since any living thing would instantly die in almost any place in the observed universe.

-The fine-tuning argument is an argument from design, so we can rightly ask, "who designed the designer?". The argument opens itself up for eternal regress. If god designed the universe to support life, this means that god itself has features that lead to the creation of life. The same argument therefore applies to the higher level - it follows that God was created in order to create life. And this God-creator was itself designed to create life, and so on and so forth.

- The argument presupposes that there is a certain range of possible values the constants can take. We don't know whether this is true, we have no idea what values the constants can take or if they can take other values at all.

-The argument presupposes that there is no natural process of creating universes, or that if there is it isn't going to create a universe with our values of the constants. This is, again, just not something we know scientifically. There still isn't a well established scientific theory on how universes are naturally created, so we cannot say that it is unlikely for our universe to have been created naturally (indeed, many of the current hypotheses indicate that our universe was created naturally; but they are not yet proved). Nor are we in the situation where science has established that there is no natural way for a universe to be created. We just don't know enough about universes for this presupposition to be accepted.

In this respect, this is an argument from ignorance. Saying that it is impossible for our universe to have been created naturally in this way is just like saying that the ordered shape of the hexagonal basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway could not have been created naturally. That is, of course, false. One can understand that the basalt columns are natural when one understand enough about how basalt is created and formed naturally. One cannot rule out a natural explanation until one has an understanding of the subject matter's natural behavior. Similarly, since we don't know how universes are created we just don't know enough to determine that the values of the constants in our universe are indicative of an unnatural process.

-The argument is too quick to assert that other values will not result in life. We haven't explored all the various possibilities thoroughly enough to make such a pronouncement. We know slight variations will produce radically different physics, but we're far from knowing that no other constellation of constants will produce complex structures or how common or naturally likely to occur are such combinations. These are two separate issues that should not be confused. Indeed, it is possible that there are values that are more supportive of life, with life more pervasive throughout the spacetime of the universe.

-The argument implicitly assumes that it is possible for a universe to be artificially created with a certain choice of values. While this might sound plausible, it is not necessary. Certain theories on universe-creation, for example, posit that the values are determined randomly due to symmetry breaking, so that there is no way for their creator or the process that creates them to determine these values in advance.

-Another problem is that the anthropic principle holds regardless of fine-tuning. Even if it would take fine-tuning not to support life, the fact that we live in a world that supports life is still not apparently necessary. God still chose just those constants that support life - he just had more choices. This raises the Argument from Contingency, the questions of why things are the way they are, but the evidential fine tuning of things becomes irrelevant.

-Another reply could be that we cannot talk about there being lots of different possible causes, and the probability of the cause being the right one, because we have no way to know how to construct the reference class - the set of possibilities. This would be an absurd double standard. Remember, it was the theists who wanted to get into the probability business in the first place, and to stop playing when it is inconvenient is just hypocrisy. In the absence of any better way of constructing a reference class of possible causes we actually have an excellent reference class to use: Advocates of the fine tuning argument obviously have a reference class of "possible universes" in mind and we can simply use this, and assume that each of these possible universes has an individual possible cause. This, of course, leads us with as many causes as there are possible universes, and if advocates of fine tuning think that most universes are inhospitable to life then they must be claiming that most causes of universes are inhospitable to life. The only way round this is to claim that the reference class of causes is not constructed like that, but the this involves taking a preferential position with no justification: They are wanting to assume that all universes are equally possible, but not that all the causes of these universes are equally possible and they are just adjusting their reference class of causes to fit the answer they want. Furthermore, even if it turned out that the cause of our universe was somehow more likely than the causes of the other universes, this does not imply a designer: By adjusting the reference class like this to get round the problem, unless you can show that your adjustment follows from the cause being a designer, youa re actually admitting that there is no fine tuning problem, that the cause of the universe, for some reason, was more likely than all the other causes that might have occurred. If you lack any sound basis for this, you may as well just apply logic like that to the universe itself anyway.

Also, to quickly spot the inadequacy of the fine-tuning argument, see the following videos on Youtube:

And to read an article which handily refutes the theistic anthropic principle, see [4]

Affirming the consequent

The Fine Tuning argument presupposes that the phenomenon of life and it being presumably only possible in a universe with physical constants exactly like the ones in ours is what qualifies this as special or sublime, however, this is based entirely on nothing other than the entities that determine what qualifies this universe as special or sublime are living (humans). This is an affirming the consequent fallacy. It could also be seen as a confirmation bias fallacy. In a hypothetical universe with different physical constants, there may be an emergent natural phenomenon that is vastly more complex than the emergence of life, the evolution of life, and the ecology of life. This phenomenon, we will label "phenomenon x", would be impossible in our universe because our physical constants may not permit phenomenon x to occur. There is no objective reason why the possibility of life demands a fine tuner more than phenomenon x. There is also no objective reason why any natural phenomenon, no matter the complexity, should demand a fine tuner any more than another. Hypothetically, if it were shown that life of some kind is possible in most possible universes, but the phenomenon of lightning is only possible in this one, then an apologist might assert that because we occupy the only possible universe with lightning, this universe must have been finely tuned.

A reductio ad absurdum can be constructed to demonstrate the weakness of the argument. If life is improbable then the existence of spaghetti is even more improbable.

1. The combination of physical constants that we observe in our universe is the only one capable of sustaining spaghetti as we know it.

2. Other combinations of physical constants are conceivable.

3. Therefore, some explanation is needed why our actual combination of physical constants exists rather than a different one.

4. The very best explanation of the given fact is that our universe, with the particular combination of physical constants that it has, was created out of nothing by a single being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and interested in spaghetti, and that he “fine-tuned” those constants in a way which would lead to the evolution of such foods.

5. But such a being as described in (4) is what is meant by the "Flying Spaghetti Monster".

6. Hence [from (4) & (5)], there is good evidence that the "Flying Spaghetti Monster" exists.